Google acquired today Israeli startup company SlickLogin. Five months ago, the company made its debut on the internet password security scene offering an interesting alternative – sound-based passwords.

The announcement of the acquisition sits on the company’s homepage, where the small team says that now they’ll be making the Internet safer for everyone. Presumably, Google has decided to replace its 2-step verification with a better authentication method. Read more »

In addition to the plethora of new features and improvements that Windows Phone 8.1 will bring to the table, a more detailed digging into the SDK of the OS unveiled that Internet Explorer will also receive the option to store passwords.

This undoubtedly comes to a big relief to Windows Phone users, who are forced to type their passwords each and every time under the current version of WP. Read more »

Toshiba has officially launched its new 5TB enterprise HDDs from the MG04 series spinning at 7200rpm. Designed for the mid-range servers and cloud applications in mind, the new Toshiba MG04 HDD is based on 1TB platters and comes in 2TB, 3TB, 4TB as well as 5TB variants.

The MG04 HDDs feature 7200 spindle-speed and either 64MB or 128MB cache. Naturally, they utilize the SAS-6Gb/s interface (as opposed to ATA-6GB/s) and are quite power efficient. Read more »

According to Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist, popular instant messaging platform Viber is currently in talks to be acquired by a rival company in Asia. While nothing is confirmed just yet, it’s said that the Asian instant messaging company has made an offer for Viber worth $300 to $400 million dollars.

Popular Asian mobile chat applications include WeChat (China), Line (Japan) and KakaoTalk (South Korea), but the newspaper doesn’t confirm which one has placed the bid. Viber boasts 200 million registered users based in 193 countries and is available on nearly ever mobile and desktop platform there is. Read more »

The development of CyanogenMod 11 is going strong and as of today M3 releases are available for download, bringing us one step closer to reaching Release Candidate status.

Built on top of Android 4.4 KitKat, CyanogenMod 11 is slowly but surely crawling to a large number of devices. The CM 11 M3 snapshots are already available for the Google Nexus 5 and 7 (2013) as well as the LG G2. Read more »

Kim Dotcom’s cloud storage service Mega is slowly but surely shaping up as a viable alternative to the popular services like SkyDrive and Dropbox. The Mega iOS app just gained a new feature dubbed PhotoSync – an option for automatic photo backup similar to that of Google+ and Dropbox.

The feature allows you to choose whether to upload the photos in the background when your location changes – seemingly useful if you travel a lot. And to ensure it doesn’t mess up your phone bill, you can choose whether or not your iDevice should upload over cellular data. Read more »

A new batch of leaked screenshots of the redesigned S Voice app has hit the web following earlier leak that initially hinted at upcoming changes. The new screenshots confirm Samsung is taking a new approach to the design of its TouchWiz UI and proprietary apps, of which S Voice is a major part.

In the latest version of Samsung’s personal virtual assistant, the company has entirely redesigned the app’s user interface. Well now a preview has surfaced, garnished with a bunch of images and it says that the app’s voice detection is noticeably faster, but not as good as Google Now. Read more »

Samsung continues its rapid European retail expansion, adding 15 new retail stores in the UK. Today, the company announced it has struck a deal with UK retailer Phones 4U to manage 15 Samsung stores in the country.

Just last week, the Koreans announced a similar partnership with Phones 4U rival Carphone Warehouse, which includes 60 Samsung stores in Europe, 20 of which will operate in the UK.

Read more »

The anticipated Pebble Appstore that was announced at CES 2014 is now live. It provides a unified place for developers to distribute their Pebble apps and packs over 1000 apps and watchfaces at launch.

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Initially, the store launches for iOS only, but the Android version will follow shortly after. The app store features separate categories for apps and watchfaces – Daily, Tools & Utilities, Notifications, Remotes, Fitness, and Games. Read more »

In an interview for Trusted Reviews Archos CEO Loic Poirier said his company considers making a Windows Phone handset. However, he didn’t specify exactly when this might happen.

We will launch a Windows Phone handset when the time is right, said Poirier. He adds, that the Windows Phone market has become mature enough for Archos to enter, but for now, it’ll keep its focus on Android. Before anything else we are focused on Google, he notes. Read more »

With our review of the Lumia 1320 under way, we managed to run the smartphone through our battery life test gauntlet and we are now giving you the scores. With an endurance rating of 105 hours, its premium brother the Lumia 1520, set the bar pretty high leaving no room for mediocre performance on Lumia 1320′s side.

And at least on paper we shouldn’t expect the Lumia 1320 to flop. It sports an identical battery to the Lumia 1520 – a 3,400 Li-Ion unit as well as the same 6″ display, which is even of lower resolution this time. Read more »

UK retailer Zavvi has slashed the price of the Nexus 7 (2012) 32GB model to £99 – a whopping £80 off its usual retail price. Before you rush to order one yourself, though, be mindful that this is not for a brand-new unit, but for a refurbished one.

Still, Zavvi claims this is a “manufacturer grade A refurb”, which means it should be the next best thing. Shipments will commence on February 3 and it’s not clear how much 2012 Nexus 7′s are in stock. Read more »

You’d never think that an affordable offering such as the Motorola Moto G with no IP rating or anything will survive being submerged under water for even a few second. When Motorola said it’s wrapping the insides of the phone with a water-resistant nano-coating, many though that’s more of a marketing trick, than anything else.

That’s certainly not the case, as YouTube reviewer Erica Griffin has discovered. In fact the phone dived under water for a nudge over 40 minutes and the result is quite shocking. Read more »

SamMobile has been able to gain access to a new app that Samsung intends to launch with the Galaxy S5. Dubbed Life Times, it’s sort of a personal diary app, which collects information from a list of apps in order to create a comprehensive log.

Life Times automatically gathers information from the list of apps (Camera, Email, Location, Memo, Messages, Music, phone and S Health as well as a list of social networks), which makes it similar to Samsung’s Story Album app. This begs the question if Life Times is destined to replace it or not. Read more »

Viber has brought the Sticker Market feature to the Windows Phone 8 version of its instant messenger. Available in the latest update of the app, this is Viber’s first attempt at generating revenue with its services.

On top of that, the update brings enhanced notifications, which the company says are now smarter. Viber users also have more options to customize their statuses. Read more »